Washington State University Athletics
Volleyball Battles No. 1 USC to Five Sets
November 02, 2015 | Volleyball
PULLMAN, Wash. -- The Washington State volleyball team (14-10 overall, 3-9 Pac-12) played “resilient” and battled to the end before No. 1 USC (23-1, 11-1) prevailed in a thrilling five-set match Sunday afternoon in Bohler Gym. USC, coming off a stunning three-set loss at No. 5 Washington Friday night, hung on to win Sunday in Pullman with set scores of 20-25, 25-19, 25-19, 19-25, and 15-13.
Cougar freshman McKenna Woodford led the team with a career-high 22 kills, and had eight digs, one ace and one block. Kyra Holt had another double-double match with 19 kills and 14 digs while Ashley Vander Tuig had a career-high eight blocks. Haley MacDonald also had a double-double setting up 48 assists to go with her 10 digs and four blocks. Kate Sommer led the team with 18 digs and Tani Stephens added another 12 digs. Claire Martin had five blocks and six Cougars had one ace each.
USC was led by Samantha Bricio's 26 kills in addition to her 13 digs and six blocks. Brittany Abercrombie had 16 kills while Alicia Ogoms led the match with 11 blocks. Taylor Whittingham had 19 digs and Victoria Garrick and Baylee Johnson each had 12 digs. Johnson also set up 38 assists.
Both squads served six aces and had 13 team blocks. USC hit .244 for the match and WSU hit .209.
“I thought we were aggressive offensively and that's something we haven't really done lately,” WSU Head Coach Jen Greeny said. “I'm really proud of the way we hit the ball and we were resilient. You know, if something didn't quite go our way we came back and fought. And I just really, really like seeing that out of the team and the communication as well. I definitely thought our blocking was much better this afternoon and I think it was a great product of our serving. We served extremely tough against the No. 1 team in the country, a very, very good team, that has a lot of weapons, so just proud of our team overall. McKenna Woodford had a tremendous afternoon as a freshman (so) really proud of her and she stepped up big.”
After the match Woodford said, “I liked the way I came back after making a mistake. That's something I've been focusing on because I get into these runs and then I kind of shut down. And so I thought, 'you mess up and you move on.' We had a really big talk on Friday after that game about finding our groove again, finding each other, sticking together, and just figuring it out. This game compared to two days ago was a completely different WSU team.”
WSU goes on the road this week, taking on No. 19 Arizona Friday, Nov. 6 in Tucson, and No. 14 Arizona State Sunday, Nov. 8, in Tempe.
